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Tuesday, January 10, 2012

a peek at a process

You may or may not know that I gift the mister with a Bert & Ernie portrait each Christmas. The last few years, I had portraits painted by two different artists. This year, funds were low and time was short so it was up to me to get my Bert & Ernie on. I knew I wanted to do silhouettes but I couldn't decide how. Frontal or profile? Classic black and white or kitschy colors? What to do?

Sometime in November I picked up a coloring book hoping there would be a good profile or image of the dynamic duo to trace or enlarge. There was one, of Bert and it was smaller than I wanted. I hopped on the internet and searched, searched, searched for something better, bigger, more! Nothing was working out and so I sat back and let the mulling mull some more.

Things narrowed down a smidge when I scored some wood plaques at the Goodwill Outlet in town. Two matchy-matchy plaques of comparable size appeared and I pounced and it was back to the drawing board.

Suddenly it was the week before Christmas (uh-oh) and I uh...needed to get a move on and I was battling the evil cold that swept through town. It was time for me to brave the pencil and draw those fellas myself. Thank goodness I was going for silhouettes for when I tried to add features the poor fellas looked like they were three sheets to the wind. But buckle down I did and I sketchy-sketched both Bert and Ernie onto their own bit of scrap paper and prepared to make stencil for some sponge painting.

I prepped the plaques with a coat of white paint and then painted each edge in their signature colors. After an excruciating hour eeking out their silhouettes with a sharp blade I decided I was nuts to think I could paint them evenly and hit the suitcase (the big blue one stuffed to the gills with all sorts of paper and scraps) to see if I had any usable paper.

Score! Fate decided the process once again and this time I broke out the scissors and snippy-snipped those happy shapes out. Add a healthy dose of mod-podge and a twisty-turn, flippy-flip, I had myself an awesome pair of silhouettes drying on the kitchen table.

the lovely folk

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the evil copyright info

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